The First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray, celebrates her 98th birthday today — the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha Fatale and Granny (owner of Tweety and Sylvester) and Jokey Smurf and Magica DeSpell and Mrs. Cauldron (on The Garfield Show) and Cindy Lou Who and if I list them all, this post will run into her 99th birthday and maybe the big 100.

A few years ago, the late Earl Kress and I assisted June with the writing of her autobiography. Before we started, we figured we knew everything she'd done and boy, were we wrong! As we find out, not only did we not imagine the length and breadth of this lady's career, it turned out she didn't even grasp it. For close to three-fourths of a century, she was so busy working in cartoons (and radio and commercials and dubbing movies and…) that she couldn't track all she'd done.

I remember one day when she phoned me and said, "Mark, I just got a residual check for a Frank Sinatra movie called Dirty Dingus Magee! Was I in that?" Apparently, yes. I haven't seen it but June probably looped a couple of voices somewhere.

This is an amazing woman. For around four decades, she was the "workingest" voice actress, working at the top of a highly competitive field. (Do you have any idea how many people think they can do voices?) 5-6 days a week, she would work from morning 'til after dark going from session to session to session. Everyone wanted to hire her because she was the best at what she did.

It has been a pleasure and an honor to know her and to work with her. And it's a pleasure and an honor to wish her a happy birthday. I have some other things to say about her but I have to save something for her 99th birthday, her 100th birthday, her 101st…

I have not yet had the time to watch the four-hour American Experience profile of Walt Disney that debuted earlier this week. On my TiVo it sits.

Floyd Norman, however, has. Floyd is the first person who speaks in the documentary and he's one of the few "talking heads" interviewed specifically for it who actually worked with and knew Walt. Floyd thinks the portrait it paints is not of the Walt Disney he worked with and knew. Just what I was afraid of.

My pal Christine Pedi — who hosts show tunes on Sirius Radio and sings them on stages around the country — demonstrates her gift for mimickry by performing "The Witch's Rap" from Into the Woods. That's her fellow Sirius Broadway Jock Seth Rudetsky playin' the pianny…

David Letterman has his first post-Late Show gig. And if I gave you a hundred guesses, you'd never guess what it is. He's going to take over playing Flo in the Progressive Insurance commercials.

No, he isn't. But this strikes me as almost as unlikely.

Here are some more interesting takes on last night's G.O.P. debate…

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David "Axis of Evil" Frum thinks it was all about who showed the greatest ability to dominate the stage.

Over at the American Conservative site, Daniel Larison thinks that none of the candidates showed any grasp of foreign policy.

Jill LePore reminds us that most of what people say at debates is forgettable and wrong.

And John Dickerson thought the big winner of the night was Carly Fiorina. If pressed to name one, I'd agree but I don't believe she has much chance of being the nominee. Do we really think Americans will get behind someone with no track record in government? Some might — and I still think this is a slim chance — accept Donald Trump's success in business as a substitute. Ms. Fiorina's track record ain't anywhere near as good.

We continue to admire from afar (I've never met the man) the fine actor, George S. Irving who is still doing major acting roles around — though lately not on — Broadway at the age of 92. He will soon be doing them at the age of 93 and a year after that at the age of 94 and then 95 and so on.

Here's a link to a new profile of Mr. Irving. As it will tell you, he was first seen on The Great White Way in a little flop called Oklahoma! That was 72 years ago and he's scarcely been outta work since then.

The article does not mention the vast amount of work Irving has done over the years as a voice for animation and commercials. Since the sixties, he's been on about half the cartoon shows that recorded their voices in New York, including Underdog and Go Go Gophers, and he gave one of the great tour de force performances as the Heat Miser in the 1974 Rankin-Bass special, The Year Without a Santa Claus. He reprised the role in a 2008 sequel and sounded just as heat-miserly as he had in '74.

If you would like to see a few minutes of Mr. Irving doing what he does so well, here's a video of him re-creating one of his great moments on stage. This is one of my ten-or-so favorites of the hundreds of videos I've linked to on this site. He's really a superb performer. (Keep in mind as you watch it that Irving was a much younger man at the time. He was 90.)

Fred Kaplan thinks that very little of what the Republican candidates said tonight about foreign policy made any sense. I'm not sure it was supposed to in terms of what to actually do if one is elected. It probably made some sense in terms of exciting Republican base voters and big donors.

Jonathan Chait pretty much summarized my feelings about it all though I do think that Trump's act is starting to wear thin. It's becoming more and more obvious that he has no answers to a lot of the big questions; just bluster and a talent for changing the subject. I don't think he's about to plunge in the polls, partly because there's plenty of time to let The Donald Trump Show rage on and partly because none of the alternatives look that appealing. But I just got the feeling tonight that a lot of his supporters are starting to wonder.

…but I'm actually watching a half-dozen websites that are live-blogging it. My favorite comment so far came from Albert Brooks on Twitter…

My problem with this debate — with all these debates; I'm sure there'll be some of this in the Democratic ones — is that all these candidates not only have their own set of views but their own sets of facts that support them. A real-time fact-checker would go crazy trying to clarify or correct. Can a person be "pro-life" and yet believe that much of what is being claimed about Planned Parenthood is untrue? Guess not. That would show weakness, not fairness.

Tomorrow, Politifact and other such sites will list dozens of factual assertions that were just plain wrong. And not one person who has a favorite candidate will think less of their guy (or gal) or the position because of that.

If you saw the Sunday Cartoon Voices Panel at Comic-Con this year in San Diego, you were dazzled by voice actress Misty Lee. Well, actually, you were dazzled by all six performers who were up there but this item is about Misty. She's not only a busy vocal performer, she's also a terrific magician — and she and her husband Paul are two of my best friends. Here's an article about her career in magic…and though I have a few quibbles with it, they're sure right that she deserves serious attention.

Here's what Jon Stewart's doing these days. He's in Washington, urging Congress to do the right thing for First Responders (and I suppose, Second Responders and Third Responders and so on) from 9/11. It's appalling that this is even an issue…

I haven't posted much here about Bernie Sanders because…well, I haven't come across many articles about him on the 'net that I found interesting. I get the feeling that he doesn't have much chance of winning the nomination or, if by some fluke he did, the presidency. And I don't think it's true, as some say, that it's because people who think he's our best option for the presidency won't support him because they think he can't win.

But that's just a feeling on my part. Seems to me all the reporting on the Democratic race — the stuff about him, the stuff about Biden maybe getting in, the stuff about Hillary, the stuff about those other guys nobody cares about — has been pretty bad. It's like the press is trying half-heartedly to find a narrative there so they just print anything and then rush back to covering The Donald.

In any case: As you may have heard, Sanders spoke the other day at Liberty University, the college that Jerry Falwell built. I love it when politicians go before audiences that are not predisposed to cheer everything they say so here's the text of the speech Sanders delivered. I doubt he picked up any votes with it but he may have caused some people to think, "Hmm…maybe guys like him aren't as evil as I thought…"

Nate Silver on what's going wrong with Hillary Clinton's campaign for president. He still calls her the heavy fave to take the Democratic nomination but…well, read it for yourself. This could still turn out to be a horse race, more likely if Biden jumps in.

You were probably wondering how I liked the first installment of Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris. I didn't…and I really (emphasis mine) don't see how they thought this show — hidden camera pranks, stunts and games — warranted the label "variety."

But then I didn't understand a lot of things…like why a live show had a disclaimer at the end that said, "Portions of this program not affecting the outcome of the competition have been edited/recreated."

And I don't understand how they did the Karaoke Game bit where three people watching at home joined in by singing in their own homes, caught on hidden cameras as they were watching the show with friends, plus they were holding microphones. I'm guessing for each of the people, the show arranged with someone to arrange a viewing party and to set up a webcam and catch an unsuspecting friend who'd been steered to the proper chair…or something.

And I don't understand why a live telecast had such a cut-and-pasted feel to much of it.

But hey, it's not my kind of show. There are a lot of very successful programs around that fall into that category.

Here's a nice little primer on aspect ratio in movies. Some of these formats present great problems (and even discussions about changing aspect ratios) when films move from movie screens to home video…

A lot of folks are writing me to say that John Oliver's show has its first airing each Sunday night at or around 11 PM, which is late night. Someone else wrote me that while that's true, so many HBO viewers have access to an earlier feed that Oliver is only a late night host by a technicality. It's really not worth worrying about.

Nor really is the exclusion of Chris Hardwick, though one person wrote to say, "Hardwick doesn't count as a late night host because he doesn't interview celebrities and he plays games." Uh, well, I don't recall us all agreeing on that as the definition of a late night host. I think it's that he hosts and is on late at night. Besides, John Oliver doesn't interview celebrities and Jimmy Fallon plays games. (By the way, I think Chris Hardwick would do great in a talk show format.)

We have another one of those cases where someone is about to be put to death for a murder on pretty flimsy evidence that many do not believe. Here's the story of Richard Glossip in Oklahoma. Years ago, I heard someone on TV say, "The State has a compelling interest in seeing that murderers are executed…and once they're executed, the State has a compelling interest in not letting anyone cast doubts on their guilt."

Rick Perry dropped out of the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination because he was polling at around 1%. How must that make you feel if you're Chris Christie (polling at around 1%), Rick Santorum (polling at around 1%), Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham (polling under 1%) or Jim Gilmore (not even listed in most polls)? How do you get up at a podium and tell your supporters — what few you have — "We're going to win this thing!" And how do you brag about your experience when the two guys clobbering you have none?

Scott Walker was once at around 11% or 12% and now he's down to about 4%. I'm trying to imagine the meeting where someone on his staff said, "We have to do something to stop this bleeding" and Walker said, "I've got just the thing! I'll announce that as president, I'll abolish labor unions!"

Yes, yes…I know Neil Patrick Harris's new show which debuts tonight is based on a British TV series called Saturday Night Takeaway. I'm just hoping it's not too based on it because I watched a little of the Brit version on YouTube and I think the pitch that sold it was, "What if we did a show designed to make sure that Mark Evanier couldn't make it past the first five minutes?" This is not to say you couldn't have a pretty successful show built on such a premise.

More later.